Page:Early voyages to Terra Australis.djvu/369

 written "de," "Ayres" is written "Aives," "Saldanha" is written "Saldaha" without the circumflex to imply an abbreviation.

But further, if we attribute to such supposed falsification, the ulterior object of claiming for the Portuguese the honour of a prior discovery, whence comes it that that object has never been carried out? It is not till now that the fact is made known, and those most interested in the ancient glory of the Portuguese nation are ignorant of the discovery which this map declares to have been made. That it never became matter of history, may be explained by the comparatively little importance which would at the time be attached to such a discovery, and also by the fact that the Portuguese, being then no longer in the fulness of their prosperity, were not keeping the subject before their attention by repeated expeditions to that country, as the Dutch shortly afterwards really began to do.

Again, the speculation might be hazarded that, as this map is a copy, the date of the discovery may have been carelessly transcribed; as, for example, 1601 may easily have been written in the original 1610 and erroneously copied. Fortunately, the correctness of the date can be proved beyond dispute. It is distinctly stated that the voyage was made by order of the Viceroy Ayres de Saldanha, the period of whose viceroyalty extended only from 1600 to 1604, thus precluding the possibility of the error suggested, and terminating before the period of the earliest of the Dutch discoveries.